RALPHONOMICS

Commentaries (some of them cheeky or provocative) on economic topics by Ralph Musgrave. This site is dedicated to Abba Lerner. I disagree with several claims made by Lerner, and made by his intellectual descendants, that is advocates of Modern Monetary Theory (MMT). But I regard MMT on balance as being a breath of fresh air for economics.

Saturday, 17 March 2018

I support the basic idea pushed by the UK organisation “Positive Money” since its foundation, namely that private banks should not be allowed to create money from thin air and lend it out: i.e. only the state should “print” money. However, PM Europe’s latest idea, namely that the financial system is threatened by the fall in the production of carbon based fuels is just nonsense. The title of their article is “Sustainable Finance & Central Banks”.

US coal production in 2017/18 was around two thirds of what it was ten years earlier according to this source. As for the UK, coal production has completely collapsed: from 200million tons in the early 1960s to 4 million tons in 2016!!!
The financial system certainly faced possible collapse ten years ago, but no one (apart from PM) has ever suggested that is down to the decline in coal mining.

Monday, 26 February 2018

WM set out a beautiful model of the real economy a few years ago which consisted simply of a family: that is parents and children, with money taking the form of business cards, issued by the parents. Unfortunately I can’t find WM’s original exposition of this analogy / model, but if you Google something like “Warren Mosler, business card, parent, children”, you’ll find several people explaining the basic ideas in the model.

I’ll set out this basic “family economy” first, and then extend the family / economy to incorporate commercial banks and money issued by those banks. Note: I’m setting out the WM business card economy from memory, so I may have some details wrong. That is, if you want the original exposition, you’ll have to find it yourself. Also, the latter “extension” is my own: I’m not suggesting WM would agree with it.

First, this “family model” is realistic in that every family is a mini economy: that is each parent produces various goods and services which are supplied to other members of the family (e.g. the wife does the cooking) and children over the age of about eight normally also have to perform tasks.

In the hypothetical WM family economy, the parents decide one day to issue a form of money, in the form of business cards. There is no good reason, as WM correctly explains, why those cards should have any value, until a day or two later, the parents decide to impose a tax on the children, which must be paid using the cards, else the children are punished.

That’s a very realistic model of the way in which money has been introduced to several civilizations over the last few thousand years. That is, the historical fact is that money has often arisen as a result of kings’ or rulers’ desire to collect tax more efficiently.

Collecting tax in the form of agricultural produce (a common way of collecting tax thru history) is clearly inefficient. Money is much more convenient. So numerous rulers decided to do exactly what the parents in WM’s model did: issue a form of money with the condition that taxes are paid using that form of money – or else. That immediately creates a demand for that money, and gives the money value.

Next, in the business card economy, the parents realise they cannot issue too many cards, else the cards will lose value (inflation). Nor can they issue too few: that would result in deficient demand for the goods and services available in the household. That is, it would result in unemployment.

Put another way, each child is bound to want to keep a limited stock of cards against a rainy day, but only a limited stock. I.e. the parents (aka the government / central bank / ruler) must issue enough cards to exactly meet the children’s desire to save, and to keep the economy working at full employment.

Next, borrowing and lending would arise in the business card economy, and absent any attempt to parents to influence the rate of interest, some sort of free market rate of interest would establish itself. The parents could artificially raise that rate of interest by offering a rate of interest above the going free market rate and could fund the interest out of taxation. But quite what the point of doing that would be is a bit of a mystery. In particular, it is widely agreed in economics that GDP is maximized where prices (including the price of borrowed money) is at its free market rate, thus any attempt by the parents to artificially raise the rate of interest would seem to be counterproductive.

Put another way, it is always tempting for governments to borrow, as pointed out by David Hume over two hundred years ago (see endnote below), but that borrowing artificially raises interest rates, and reduces GDP.

Indeed, that point ties in very neatly by WM’s claim that there should be a permanent zero rate of interest. I.e. while for example those who offer pay-day loans will always charge way above a zero rate, the rate offered by the state on its liabilities should be zero. (See 2nd last para of WM’s Huffington article “Proposals for the banking system.” and his paper “The Natural Rate of Interest is Zero”).

Commercial banks.

Having set out the basics of the WM family economy, and doubtless having left out some important points that WM made in his original version of that economy, let’s now move on to commercial banks.

As already explained, there’d be nothing to stop the children lending to each other, plus there’d be nothing to stop one or more of the children setting up as a commercial bank, i.e. specialising in safeguarding other childrens’ cards, and lending to other children.

However, that would enable the “banker children” to play a trick which commercial banks play big time in the real world, which is thus. Instead of lending out “parent issued business cards” (base money) at interest, there’d be nothing to stop the banker children issuing promises to pay genuine business cards. And as long as the non banker children trusted the banker children, that commercial bank issued money would serve as well as the real thing, i.e. parent issued cards.

If you have any grasp of banking, you’ll see what is going on here. But in case you don’t, I’ll explain.

The discovery by banker children that they can lend out promises to pay was exactly the discovery that the goldsmith bankers in England in the 1600s and 1700s made: that is, they discovered that when granting a loan, they didn’t need to lend out real gold, or even receipts for real gold. They could lend out receipts for gold that didn’t exist! They were into money printing, pure and simple.

In short, in the WM business card economy, banker children would be able to supplant the parents, and become the main issuers of money. And indeed that is exactly what has happened in the real world: prior to the 2007/8 crisis, a good 95% of the money in circulation was issued by private banks, not central banks. (That percentage has dropped to roughly 90% as a result of QE, far as I can see. But that’s not of much relevance to the argument here.)

So, does money issuance by banker children (aka “private banks”) make sense? Well the answer is that assuming that money is used purely and solely as money, and not as a long term loan, it makes no sense at all. Reason is that privately issued money is inherently expensive compared to state or “parent” issued money.

Where a commercial / private bank is going to supply a customer with money, the bank has to check up on the customer’s credit-worthiness, allow for bad debts and so on. That involves very real costs. In contrast, there is no need for a central bank (aka parents) to do that.

Incidentally, when I said “use money purely and solely as money, and not as a long term loan”, what I meant was as follows. Where a bank customer (aka child) has no money, and needs money for day to day transactions, the customer might agree with the bank to become overdraw to a maximum of $X, e.g. when short of money just before pay-day, while having a credit balance at the bank just after pay day of around $X in a typical month. In that scenario, there would be no overall loan by the bank to the customer (or vice versa) over the year as a whole. That is, the $X loan is being used purely as a float, i.e. purely as money.

Genuine loans.

As distinct from using money borrowed from a commercial bank purely as money, there are loans which are genuine long term loans, e.g. mortgages.

Now if a child banker (or a real world commercial bank) simply lends out parent issued cards (or central bank issued base money in the real world), there is little effect on demand. Reason is that in order to obtain the cards to lend out, the child banker has to persuade another child or children to ABSTAIN from spending cards, by offering the latter interest. So the reduced spending by the latter children will approximately equal the INCREASED spending by the former “borrower children”.

In contrast, if the banker children lend out “promises to pay cards”, that is entirely new money. The effect is a rise in demand, and assuming demand was already at the maximum permissible without sparking off inflation, the effect will be inflationary. Thus the parents will have to impose some sort of deflationary measure, like raising taxes and confiscating cards from other children.

In short, the effect of child bankers lending out promises to pay cards (and the effect of commercial banks in the real world lending out their home made money) is very much the same as the effect of traditional back-street counterfeiters who turn out fake $100 bills: the money printers clean up, while the rest of the community is robbed.

To summarise, where a commercial bank supplies home made money to a customer which is used purely as money, that exercise is pointless, and indeed will not take place if the central bank issues enough base money. Alternatively, where commercial banks lend out money which is used as a genuine long term loan, that activity is subsidised by the community at large.

________

Endnote – David Hume.

Hume explained why governments incur debt much more succinctly than any 21st century economist. As he put it:
“It is very tempting to a minister to employ such an expedient, as enables him to make a great figure during his administration, without overburdening the people with taxes, or exciting any immediate clamours against himself. The practice, therefore, of contracting debt will almost infallibly be abused, in every government. It would scarcely be more imprudent to give a prodigal son a credit in every banker's shop in London, than to impower a statesman to draw bills, in this manner, upon posterity.”

Thursday, 22 February 2018

Thomas Jordan, Chairman of the Governing Board Swiss National Bank published an article recently entitled “How money is created by the central bank and the banking system”. Actually the article is the transcript of a speech.

“Sovereign Money” is a quite widely used phrase which means the same as “full reserve” banking, or what Milton Friedman called “100% reserve” banking (which Friedman supported).

I have no criticisms of the first half or so of Jordan’s article: it sets out the basics about how central and commercial banks work, and in very clear language. (I’ll refer to commercial banks henceforth simply as “banks”).

But there are several points in the second half I don’t agree with. Under the heading “Why the image of creating money out of thin air is misleading”, Jordan starts by criticising the idea that banks are “privileged” in any way through reason of their ability to create money. The answer to that is that banks, at least under UK law, are very definitely in a privileged position as explained by Richard Werner in his article “How do banks create money, and why can other firms not do the same?” (published by Science Direct, 2014). That is, banks can lend on money deposited with them, but no other type of firm can do that. And it is precisely that lending on of customers’ money that enables banks to create money.

As to the law in countries other than the UK, I’m no expert on that, but it is bound to be ROUGHLY similar to UK law: for example, I doubt lawyers in other countries are allowed to lend out clients’ money deposited with them (except in as far as depositing money at a reputable bank equals a loan to that bank).

Another way in which the ability to create money puts banks in a privileged position is that that ability enables them to come by money in a costless manner (unlike non-bank corporations) and hence artificially expand the size of the bank industry. That is, non-bank corporations and firms can only obtain money by borrowing it or earning it. Banks have a third and entirely costless way: creating or “printing” money. As Joseph Huber and James Robertson explain on p.31 of their work “Creating New Money”, lending out money you have created yourself at no cost is more profitable than lending out money you have had to earn or borrow. For more on that see my article “The Bank Subsidy No One Mentions”.

Indeed, the proto-bankers in Britain in the 1600s and 1700s discovered that lending out “home made money” in the form of receipts for non existent gold was cheaper than lending out receipts for gold which actually existed.

Next, under the heading “Comments on Sovereign Money” (p.7), Jordan makes three criticisms of Sovereign Money. First he says “the switch to Sovereign Money would be a move away from the historical distribution of responsibilities between the central bank and commercial banks. In this tried and tested two tier system, commercial banks compete with one another to supply households and companies with credit and liquidity, while the central bank acts as the bankers’ bank and conducts monetary policy.”

Well certainly under Sovereign Money, the split of responsibilities as between central banks and governments does change a bit. But the idea that any change in responsibilities is inherently undesirable is not a brilliant argument. Moreover, advocates of full reserve were making it plain some time ago that a change in responsibilities was involved, e.g. see here. So the “change in responsibilities” point is not news.

As for “tried and tested”, that rather implies that banks have “passed the test” so to speak. In view of the 2007/8 bank crisis, it might be more appropriate to say “tried and found to be severely wanting, as demonstrated in the 2007/8 bank crisis.”

Also it is not true to say banks cease to “compete with one another to supply households and companies with credit…”. The basic change when switching to Sovereign Money is that banks have to fund their loans via equity rather than via debt (e.g. deposits). Apart from that, they compete as they always did.

Monetary policy.

As for the idea that the central bank no longer “conducts monetary policy”, that is not entirely true either. Certainly under Sovereign Money, monetary policy becomes less potent in that interest rate adjustments become less effective. However, under Sovereign Money, central banks and governments still manage stimulus, which of necessity is at least to some extent monetary in nature.

To be more exact, assuming the sort of stimulus advocated by Positive Money is implemented instead, i.e. having central bank and government create new money and spend it (and/or cut taxes) that form of stimulus has a monetary element. That is when central bank and government create and spend fresh money, there is an initial fiscal effect: jobs are created for example in state schools or via building state owned infrastructure. Second, that spending results in the private sector’s stock of money rising. That’s monetary policy of a sort. (Incidentally Positive Money is a UK based organisation that backs the Sovereign Money idea.)

Next, Jordan says that Sovereign Money , “..calls for the Swiss National Bank to guarantee the supply of credit to the economy by financial services providers. In order to carry out this additional mandate, the SNB could provide banks with credit, probably against securitised loans. Depending on the circumstances, the SNB would have to accept credit risks onto its balance sheet and, in return, would have a more direct influence on lending. Such centralisation is not desirable. The smooth functioning of the economy would be hampered by political interference, false incentives and a lack of competition in banking.”

That idea, namely that the central bank should oversee the total amount of credit offered, and boost it if necessary is actually an OPTIONAL EXTRA, at least under Positive Money’s system. Moreover, it’s an optional extra I don’t care for, thus I agree with Jordan in a sense there. Put another way, I see nothing wrong with simply insisting that loans are funded via equity, and then leaving it to the market to sort out.

Moreover, the idea that economists, whether working for the central bank or not, have superior judgement to the free market is very debatable. For example is the amount of lending to SMEs under the existing system adequate or not? There are arguments both ways on that one.

Interest rates would rise?

Jordan’s second criticism starts: “…Sovereign Money limits liquidity and maturity transformation as banks would no longer be able to create deposits through lending. Sovereign Money thus restricts the supply of liquidity and credit to households and companies. The financing of investment in equipment and housing would likely become more expensive.”

Well the first problem with that idea is that arguably interest rates are too low, with the result that we have excessive amounts of debt. Certainly if the popular idea that debts are excessive is correct, then a rise in interest rates would do no harm.

Another big potential problem with Jordan’s latter claim is the Modigliani Miller theory. According to the MM, the cost of funding a bank, or indeed any corporation, is not influenced by the method of funding. I.e. according to MM, funding via equity is no more expensive than funding via deposits. MM does have its critics, but I’ve been through the criticisms and I’m not impressed. (See section 1.4g here)

As for the point that Sovereign Money “limits maturity transformation”, I suggest that is an understatement. I.e. the truth is that Sovereign Money means the end of maturity transformation. Reason is that maturity transformation and money creation by private banks are the same thing. So if private money creation is banned, then so too is maturity transformation. Reasons for that are as follows.

Starting with the simplest possible loan, i.e. a loan from Mr A to Ms B, A loses access to his money until B repays it. In theory A can sell the loan, but for a person to person loan like that, A would not get a good price for the loan. That is, there no very effective way for A to transform his long term loan into a short term one (i.e. engage in maturity transformation).

In contrast, a bank can take deposits from dozens of people, lend the money on to B, at the same time as promising the depositors they can have their money back whenever they want. I.e. the sort of long term loan that is involved where A lends to B, in the case of bank, involves funding a long term loan via loans to the bank (i.e. deposits) which have a time to maturity of zero. And a liability of a bank which has zero maturity is money.

To summarise, the bank lends £X to B, so B has the use of the money, while the depositors who deposited £X with the bank still have access to their £X. Lo and behold £X has been turned into £2X.

Disallowing maturity transformation certainly has a deflationary effect, but that doesn’t matter because the state can print and spend any amount of money it wants into the economy to compensate.

So Jordan’s claim that “Sovereign Money thus restricts the supply of liquidity and credit to households and companies” isn't quite right. That is, the amount of “liquidity” is not affected in that the loss of commercial bank created money is approximately compensated for by an increased supply of state issued money. Secondly, there is less credit creation, i.e. less lending, but that doesn’t matter in that everyone has a larger stock of base money and thus they do not need to borrow so much. In short, Sovereign Money results in less loan based economic activity, and more non-loan-based activity.

The third criticism – financial stability.

Jordan’s third criticism starts “Third, it would be naive to hold out too much hope on the financial stability front Investors and borrowers will always make misjudgements. A switch to Sovereign Money would thus not prevent harmful excesses in lending or in the valuation of stocks, bonds or real estate.”

Well the advocates of Sovereign Money have never claimed that by some magic, creditors’ ability to assess debtors is transformed. In fact that ability will remain much the same.

One of the crucial differences between a Sovereign Money system and the existing system is that however bad those misjudgements, a bank cannot possibly go bust as a result. E.g. if a bank’s loans turn out to be worth say 75% of book value (and that’s far worse than anything that happened to large banks during the recent crisis) all that happens is that the value of the shares that fund the bank drop to about 75% of book value. It is quite common for shares of non-bank corporations to drop to 75% of the value over a period of weeks or months, either because of a general fall in stock exchange indices, or because of poor performance by particular corporations. That sort of event does not cause finance crises.

Next, in his third criticism of Sovereign Money, Jordan claims “So the Sovereign Money initiative, with its focus on payment transaction accounts does not resolve the too big to fail issue.” My answer to that is: “yes it does”. As explained just above, under Sovereign Money, banks cannot fail. That solves the too big to fail problem!

Jordan then says, “The initiative (i.e. Sovereign Money) requires that the SNB manage the money supply, an idea we abandoned some 20 years ago. Today, the SNB steers monetary conditions via money market rates, a strategy which has served it well over the years. A switch to monetary targeting would therefore be an unnecessary step backwards from our perspective.”

Well I’m not acquainted with all the details of the Swiss Sovereign Money movement, but in the case of the equivalent movement in the UK, i.e. Positive Money, interest rate adjustments are not replaced SIMPLY with adjustments to the money supply. What happens is that the state, to repeat, creates and spends new money (and/or cuts taxes) when stimulus is needed. And the mere fact of that spending (e.g. on infrastructure, state schools, etc) creates jobs. I.e. there is an immediate fiscal effect there, followed by a longer term monetary effect stemming from the increased money supply. As distinct from increased public spending, government can choose to cut taxes, an option that a relatively right wing government might prefer.

Reversibility.

Jordan then queries the reversibility of stimulus, Sovereign Money style, and certainly that’s a valid point to raise. That’s in his next paragraph, starting “Another problem for monetary policy would arise….”.

There are actually two or three possible forms of reversibility under Sovereign Money. First, all economies have a form of built in and totally automatic form of reversibility via the 2% inflation target. That is, if inflation is running at 2% a year, then the real value of the country’s stock of base money and government debt declines at 2% a year.

At some point that decline is guaranteed to lead to the private sector having what it regards as an inadequate stock of the latter two assets (which are actually so similar that they almost amount to the same thing, as explained by Martin Wolf in the Financial Times). The private sector will then begin to save, and as Keynes pointed out via his “paradox of thrift” metaphor, that leads to deficient demand, at which point, far from reversibility being needed, the opposite, i.e. stimulus is needed.

A second possible form of reversibility is tax. As explained above, under Sovereign Money, stimulus can be implemented by cutting taxes. Likewise, a “reverse” can be implemented by raising taxes (and “unprinting” the money collected).

Third, interest rates can be raised. As explained above, interest rate adjustments do not have as big an effect under Sovereign Money as under the existing system, but they would nevertheless have a finite effect.

Uncertainty.

Jordan’s next objection to Sovereign Money (para starting “Finally, a more general….”) is that there would be “uncertainty” and “turmoil” if Switzerland shifted to a Sovereign Money system while other countries did not.

Certainly it would be better for a significant group of countries, like the EU, to make the switch rather than just one country make the switch. But there are Sovereign Money movements in most countries nowadays, thus if the basic Sovereign Money idea is valid, then hopefully several countries will make the switch at the same time. Put another way, the fact that a solution to a problem is most effective where several countries or all countries adopt the solution at the same time is not a good argument against that solution.

Also Jordan does not spell out exactly what the above “uncertainty” and “turmoil” would consist of. Well here is a suggestion: where one country alone implements Sovereign Money, that could raise interest rates, i.e. make loans more expensive, which would be an artificial advantage for foreign banks.

Well the answer to that is that loans are relatively cheap under the existing system because under the existing system banks are subsidised. First there is the well known TBTF subsidy. The TBTF subsidy derives from the belief that under no circumstances can large banks be allowed to fail, and to that end, the Fed loaned around $600bn at a near zero rate of interest for around 18months to various banks. The $600bn comes from figure 11 here. As to the near zero rate, I have not been able to confirm the average rate, but all the individual loans made by the Fed that I’ve looked at were at either a zero or a near zero rate. That compares to the 10% that Warren Buffet charged Goldman Sachs at the height of the crisis for a $5bn loan, so 10% is presumably the realistic rate approximately.

And for another example of the sort of subsidy that bankers manage to wheedle out of politicians, the UK government has always provided deposit insurance for banks for free till quite recently.

Now if some foreign country wants to provide goods or services at an artificially low rate, why not let them? I.e. if Switzerland or any other country implements Sovereign Money, and finds that foreign owned banks eat into the market in the Switzerland or wherever, what is there to worry about? To take an extreme example, if any country out there wants to sell me a brand new car for $1, please get in touch with me.

Why don’t base money backed accounts already exist?

Finally, in the first paragraph of his conclusion, Jordan asks why banks have not already set up CB money backed accounts if such accounts are so wonderful.

Well the first answer to that is that in some countries, governments (rather than banks) actually have set up such accounts. For example there is National Savings and Investments in the UK. And NSI accounts are quite popular in the UK. NSI does not offer the full range of services offered by a normal bank, but it comes quite close to doing so.

Second, Jordan points to the fact that banks under the existing system offer everything a bank customer could want: interest on deposited money plus total security.

Well the flaw in that argument is that the security only comes thanks to taxpayers standing behind bank accounts. Put another way, taxpayers enable depositors to have their cake and eat it: depositors can have their money fund relatively risky loans, with taxpayers picking up the pieces when that goes wrong. Why should any depositor say no to that arrangement?

If taxpayers compensated me for losses at the local casino, but let me keep the winnings when I won, I’d be in the local casino every other night of the week.

Wednesday, 21 February 2018

The reason you pay an unnecessarily large amount of interest on your mortgage comes at the end of this article. To explain the reasons, it is necessary to explain something about MMT and interest rates.

According to Simon Wren-Lewis in an article entitled “Do Trump’s deficits matter?”, MMTers do no approve of interest rate adjustments. As he says:

“…what MMT actually says is that inflation should determine what the deficit should be. If inflation looks like staying below target you can and should have a larger deficit, and vice versa. The reason they say that is that they think the central bank, in changing interest rates to control inflation, is wasting its time, because they believe rates do not have a predictable impact on demand and inflation.”

Well speaking as someone who reads and leaves more comments on MMT blogs than about 99.999% of the population, that’s not my impression. However, MMTers are a diverse lot, and it’s often not entirely clear what they think as a group.
My impression is that MMTers don’t think much of interest rate adjustments because they tend to believe in a permanent zero interest rate, or at least that a zero rate should always be the objective, with occasional interest rate rises being used only in emergencies. Milton Friedman advocated that policy in his 1948 American Economic Review paper. See para starting “Operation of the proposal…”.

One reason for favoring a permanent zero rate is as follows. The private sector and the banking system in particular need a supply of base money. And that need is such that the private sector will willingly hold a stock of that money without being offered any reward for doing so. I.e. no interest needs to be paid.

But if the state issues too much of that money (i.e. runs too large a deficit for too long), then private sector entities will try to spend away the excess, and inflation will ensue, unless the state induces the private sector to hold onto that excess stock by offering interest on it.

But what’s the point of doing that? I.e. what’s the point, to put it figuratively, of inducing people to keep large wads of £10 notes under their mattresses, and inducing them not to spend that money by offering interest on it? This is a farce. It amounts to rewarding hoarders with money extracted from taxpayers.

It also results in everyone with a mortgage paying more interest than they need, just to enable central banks to adjust demand by adjusting interest rates. If monetary policy (i.e. interest rate adjustments) were VASTLY MORE EFFICIENT than fiscal policy when it comes to controlling demand, then there might be an argument for imposing that cost on mortgagers. But the evidence, far as I can see, is that interest rate adjustments do not work in a particularly quick, and predictable way, plus there are some who argue they don’t even have much effect.

Tuesday, 20 February 2018

It seems to be fashionable to argue that high house prices in the UK are not down to a shortage of houses. A quick read thru those sort of arguments normally reveals some nonsense thinking. This article is typical. It’s by Ian Hulheirn, Director of Consulting at Oxford Economics and former HM Treasury economist. (Article title: "Part I: Is there really a housing shortage".
His first argument is that because there are 5% more houses than households now as compared 3% 25 years ago that therefor there is no housing shortage.

Well now real incomes have increased during that period which can reasonably be expected to result in households demanding LARGER houses, and in more people demanding second homes. Plus there are more single person households than 25 years ago, and single people tend to demand more square meters of housing that the typical husband, wife and two kids household.

In short, it is reasonable to assume demand has risen. As to supply, the average value of land with planning permission to build on is £6million per hectare according to this source. That compares to around £20,000 for land without planning permission. If that doesn’t indicate an artificial shortage of land to build on, then what does?

Non-peer reviewed (or only lightly peer reviewed) publications. The coloured clickable links below are EITHER the title of the work, OR a very short summary (where I think a short summary conveys more than the title).

i) The above is not a complete list in that earlier versions of some papers have been omitted. For a more complete list see here, and “browse by author” (top of left hand column).

ii) 7 deals with a wide range of alleged reasons for government borrowing, including Keynsian borrow and spend. 6 is an updated version of the "anti-Keynes" arguments in 7. 5 is an updated version of 1, which in turn is an updated version of 4.

______________

.

Bits and bobs.

.

The Swiss Sovereign Money movement.

The bank subsidy no one mentions.

I can see the point of making accounts at a country’s central bank available to all, and in having that run on block chain / crypto lines (if that’s the most efficient way of operating those accounts). Accounts with the central bank / government have essentially been available to Brits for decades in the form of accounts at National Savings and Investments. Block chain / crypto could make that more efficient.But what’s the point of an OFFICIAL crypto currency where the units are liable to quaduple in value (like Bitcoin) and then crash?

________

Study puts the value of the Too Big To Fail subsidy for large Canadian banks at around $1.6billion a year for each bank. And what do the regulators and their cronies in the bank industry do? Mumble into their beards, look the other way, and try to sweep the whole thing under the carpet. (hat tip to Stephanie Schulte)________

The first two sentences of Simon Wren-Lewis’s latest article (15th March) made me laugh:

"I was not going to write anything about the non-event of Hammond’s Spring statement, in part because I confess I am tired of writing about the Conservative party’s hopeless macroeconomic policy. It is like being forced to second mark all the fails from a first year economics exam."________

Larry Kudlow is Trump’s new economic advisor. In Dec. 2007 just before the worst recession since the Great Depression, Kudlow said: “There’s no recession coming. The pessimistas were wrong. It’s not going to happen...The Bush boom is alive and well.” Well that bodes well doesn’t it?

But all is not lost. Cheer up! Trump normally sacks those he has appointed a month after appointing them.....:-) ________

Simon Wren-Lewis (Oxford economics prof) does another article in which he expresses interest in MMT.________

It is precisely the fact that private banks are allowed to create or print money that causes bank failures.

Money is a short term liability of a bank. So if banks can create money, they can engage in “borrow short and lend long”, which is what causes bank failures. But that risky method of money creation is totally unnecessary because central banks can supply the economy with whatever amount of money is needed to bring full employment, and all without the above attendant risk.________

Mark Carney, governor of the Bank of England is not impressed by crypto currencies.________

The Fed implemented QE, which is supposed to have a stimulatory effect, at the same time as paying interest on reserves, which has the opposite effect, i.e. a deflationary effect. Unless I’m much mistaken, that equals schizophrenia.________

Nice article in the Financial Times today entitled “George Osborne austerity target is hit…”. The FT seems enthusiastic about the “austerity target” having been hit. I quite agree. I’m looking forward to women being sent down coal mines, young boys being sent up chimneys to clean them, and the re-introduction of Victorian slums (ho ho).

More seriously, the article shows no understanding of Keynes's point that the deficit / surplus needs to be whatever brings full employment without too much inflation. I.e. deficits are not inherently undesirable, and (contrary to the FT's suggestions) surpluses are not inherently desirable._________

Long time ago, oil companies knew that global warming would change the climate, and adjusted the design of their oil rigs and pipe-lines to suit. They then denied the existence of global warming. Don’t you just love it?________

Wall Street crooks manage to roll back stricter regulation and return to the good old "heads we win, tails the taxpayer loses" arrangement. Meanwhile politicians are way too dumb to know what's going on, and anyway their pockets will have been stuffed with wads of dollar bills to make sure they “see sense”.________

Total fines and out of court settlements paid by US banks (since the 2007 crisis I assume) now stands at $243bn.________

Laugh of the day: Mark Carney tells bankers they should not aim to earn loads of money but should aim to “promote……prosperity in the wider society”. ________

Sarah Bedford of the New Economics Foundation claims output of immigrants in the UK is £17million per day. Least that’s what she SEEMS to be saying: it’s not actually 100% clear what she's saying. Anyway assuming my interpretation of her work is right then…. let’s import the entire population of China: then the "output of immigrants" would be a HUNDRED TIMES more!!!!________

I do like Stephanie Kelton’s MMT colouring book. Filling in the colours should be a compulsory for all those with mental ages below three - i.e. all those under three, and all politicians over the age of three -….:-)________

90% of Euro banknotes issued in Germany are never spent: they’re just hoarded!!!!________

Thinking aloud….free banking (advocated by George Selgin and others) comes to the same thing as full reserve banking, seems to me. Reason is that under free banking there is no deposit insurance, thus deposits at banks are essentially equity: so called “depositors” stand to lose their shirts just like shareholders. At the same time, under free banking, depositors who want total safety are presumably free to deposit money at state run savings banks like National Savings and Investments in the UK. And that is effectively full reserve banking: loans are funded via equity, while no risks whatever are taken with deposits that are supposed to be totally safe.________

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MUSGRAVE'S LAW SOLVES THE FOLLOWING PROBLEM.

The problem. Deficits and / or national debts allegedly need reducing. The conventional wisdom is that they are reduced by raising taxes and / or cutting government spending, which in turn produces the money with which to repay the debt. But raised taxes or spending cuts destroy jobs: exactly what we don’t want. A quandary.

The solution. The national debt can be reduced at any speed and without austerity as follows. Buy the debt back, obtaining the necessary funds from two sources: A, printing money, and B, increasing tax and/or reduced government spending. A is inflationary and B is deflationary. A and B can be altered to give almost any outcome desired. For example for a faster rate of buy back, apply more of A and B. Or for more deflation while buying back, apply more of B relative to A